Event details

Speaker:
Simon Gingins, Holger R. Goerlitz, Phil Koonce, Robert Kraus, Sebastian Meyer-Borchert, Mara Thomas

As part of the annual Postdoc Appreciation Week, the MPI of Animal Behavior and the Cluster of Excellence Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour are organizing a Career Day at the University of KN on September 20. The aim of the Career Day is to present alternative career options outside of academia, to provide opportunities for exchange and discussion, and to bring together our current early career researchers with our alums over snacks and drinks. The Career Day will take place on 20.09.2024 from 13:00 to 17:30 in the new VCC research building (ZT12). The program includes parallel sessions with individual speakers from various sectors, a panel discussion with all invited speakers and participants, followed by an informal exchange and networking get-together.

13:00 Welcome + introduction of the invited speakers Data Theater

• Isabell Otto, Vice Rector for Diversity and Academic Staff Development
• Melanie Moosbuchner, ASD

13:30 Career options outside academia: presentation and Q+A session with individual speakers from various sectors (in parallel sessions)

• Private industry: Robert Kraus, GAA GmbH & Co. KG (13:30, ZT1202)
• Public authorities: Simon Gingins, Federal Office for the Environment BAFU (13:30, ZT1204)
• Science management: Daniel Piechowski, MPI-AB + Alex Wild, CASCB (13:30, ZT1201)
• IT / Data Analyst: Phil Koonce, YouTube (14:10, ZT1202)
• Start up + technology transfer: Sebastian Meyer-Borchert, Max Planck Innovation (14:10, ZT1204)
• Science communication + community management: Carla Avolio, MPI-AB; Nihan Toprakkiran, CASCB (14:10, ZT1201)
• Pharma industry: Mara Thomas, Roche (14:50, ZT1202)
• Consulting: Holger Goerlitz, d-fine (14:50, ZT1204)
• Research data + infrastructure management: Lena Dreher, CASCB (tbc) + Mathias Günther, CASCB (14:50, ZT1201)

15:30 Panel discussion with invited speakers Data Theater

16:30 Exchange and networking get-together Foyer ZT12

Short bio of the invited speaker and panel members:

Dr. Simon Gingins is a Swiss biologist. After studying at the University of Lausanne (BSc + MSc), he did a PhD at the university of Neuchatel on the behavior of cleaner fishes. He then moved to the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior for a postdoc on the collective behavior of coral reef fishes. After 4 years in Konstanz, he moved back to Switzerland, had two kids and got a job in the public sector. Working first for one of the cantons, he was overseeing the local projects on fish migration restoration. For a bit more than three years now, he’s working for the federal office of the environment on the same topic, but at the scale of the country.

Dr. Holger R. Goerlitz studied Biology and Chemistry in Tübingen, obtained his PhD in Behavioural Neurobiology from the LMU Munich, and worked for four years as PostDoc at the University of Bristol (UK). After starting as Senior Researcher at the MPI for Ornithology in Seewiesen, he then lead his own independent research group there for seven years, funded by Emmy Noether and Heisenberg. Since 2021, he is working at d-fine, a European consulting company, focusing on data science implementations for clients in various business sectors.

Phil Koonce started work at Google in 2012 in a Display Ads engineering team in New York after finishing his undergraduate degree in Computer Science and Engineering at Swarthmore College. He's since worked on analytics tools at YouTube in Zurich, gone back briefly to the ads world, and most recently returned to YouTube to work on automated detection of videos that violate YouTube's content policies.

Dr. Robert Kraus graduated as a biologist from the Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany, and earned his PhD in 2011 working on genetic structure on a genome level in mallards and their relation to Avian Influenza at Wageningen University, The Netherland. By application of genome-scale molecular genetic information in applied nature conservation he contributed to interdisiciplinary projects with conservation authorities and agencies for three years of postdoctoral research at the Senckenberg Institute Frankfurt/Gelnhausen, Germany. Robert returned to study the evolutionary genomics and disease ecology of ducks at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior with a joined position at Konstanz Univerity. Across his career, Robert appreciated analysing data with computational tools very early and developed a deeper understanding of bioinformatic tools and high performance compute clusters. In 2020, after some 15 years of working, teaching and living as a scientist, Robert decided to leave academia mainly because of the precarious situation of not only young but also advanced researchers in Germany. With an open mind he applied to "normal" jobs in industry and now works as a project manager on topics around digitalisation, automated data extraction and entreprise content management: not a single bit of biology in there, but all the social soft and technical hard skills that came with 15 years of research experience.

Sebastian Meyer-Borchert brings extensive experience as a consultant and within the start-up ecosystem. In his current role as Senior Start-up & Portfolio Manager at Max-Planck-Innovation, the technology transfer organization of the Max Planck Society, he advises and supports scientists from various institutes in founding start-ups based on their inventions. Sebastian has successfully facilitated the creation of several start-ups and serves on multiple Advisory Boards. Additionally, he is responsible for entrepreneurship education programs and the evaluation of new research results and business ideas. Before joining Max-Planck-Innovation, Sebastian worked as Senior Project Manager at a management consultancy, where he led international projects across a wide range of industries, focusing on strategy development and corporate finance. Earlier in his career, he was in charge of the controlling and finance department at a business incubator. Sebastian holds a degree in business administration from LMU Munich, is a Certified Controlling Advisor (EBS), and has a bachelor’s degree in psychology

Dr. Mara Thomas is a versatile molecular biologist and bioinformatician with over 7 years of expertise in advanced data analysis, machine learning and research across high-dimensional datasets. After her PhD in Neurosciences at the Graduate Training Centre of Neuroscience in Tübingen in 2020, she continued as postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior conducting research on animal group dynamics. Beginning of 2022, Mara moved from academia to industry as Senior Data Scientist at Roche Information Solutions where she uses machine learning to develop algorithms and models that help predict and diagnose diseases.